Local bus riders will soon need to get their fares in order.
After nearly five years of not enforcing fares, and amid fears of an unsafe bus system, King County Metro will once again dispatch inspectors to ask passengers for proof of payment.
The return to fare inspection — halted in the early days of COVID-19 — comes as Metro inches toward its prepandemic ridership but collects far below what it used to from the farebox.
The change has less to do with safety and revenue, and more to do with riders’ perceptions of fairness, according to Metro.
“We’ve heard from community members that paying the fare is important,” said Sean Hawks, a Metro spokesperson. “Paying fares is right up there with safety and respect.”
Hawks wouldn’t connect the return to fare inspection with fears people may have of riding transit and couldn’t say what proportion of people who commit crime on local buses don’t pay the fare.
“I don’t have those statistics,” Hawks said.
What is known, however, is fare evaders will soon pay a price for riding the bus for free.
Beginning March 31, two to three fare inspectors will board a bus and ask for proof of fare payment, either an Orca card or, if paying with cash, a valid transfer ticket provided by the driver.
One inspector will enter through the front and one through the rear door. If there’s a third, they will enter through the middle doors. The inspectors will ask for fares beginning at each end of the bus, working their way to the middle. Fare inspections will take place while the bus is moving, to ensure the bus stays on schedule.
“It could take seconds if there are only a few riders on the coach, and possibly up to a few minutes if the bus is full,” Hawks said.
People 18 and under ride free but are encouraged to get an Orca Youth card, which helps the agency collect stronger, more robust data about how people use transit that helps the agency get state funding.
Metro estimates that about 34% of riders don’t pay the fare.
Riders who don’t pay will get “friendly, verbal reminders” that they could be subject to fines when tickets begin being issued May 31.
At that time, fare evaders will get two written warnings. The third violation comes with a $20 fine, which increases to $40 if not paid within 30 days.
Rather than pay a fine, people can also load $20 onto an Orca card, enroll in a reduced fare program if they’re eligible, do two hours of community service or appeal.
Metro plans to have 30 fare inspectors roaming its bus system. They will come from the ranks of the 170 transit security officers the agency already employs.
They’ll have considerable ground to cover. Metro operates 139 routes. At its busiest, during the weekday rush, the agency has 920 buses in service, including those it runs for the Sound Transit Express routes.
Before the five-year pause in fare inspection, riding a bus without paying resulted in a warning, followed by a citation and, on the third violation, a misdemeanor criminal charge.
Hawks said part of the reason it took so long to bring inspections back is Metro wanted to ensure they were done equitably.
Fair bus fare
Metro suspended fare collection and enforcement originally to help control the spread of COVID. At the time, passengers were only allowed to board through the back door to minimize drivers’ exposure.
But on June 11, 2020 — less than three weeks after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police — King County declared racism a public health crisis, leading to the establishment of the Safety, Security and Fare Enforcement initiative by Metro and the Metropolitan King County Council.
The SaFE initiative also followed agency audits showing that Black and homeless riders were disproportionately cited for fare evasion. Sound Transit, which had similar issues, returned to fare enforcement and began issuing tickets in November 2023.
“There was an overdue national reckoning on race. We made a commitment at that time to look at how we envision fares,” Hawks said.
Though fares returned in October 2020, Metro said enforcement would not come back until the agency could figure out a way to do it fairly.
After hearing from riders, employees and people in the community — some 8,000 in all, Metro said — the agency found that passengers wanted an “increased presence” on buses, and a timely response should danger arise. They also wanted clearer expectations of what behavior is allowed on buses to make sure minor offenses don’t shuffle people into the legal system.
“One of the most important things fare inspectors will do, they’ll inspect every single person,” Hawks said. “We’re not picking and choosing. We do want this to be fair. If somebody can’t pay the fare, we’ll connect them with the right program.”
Metro says fare enforcement officers will ask for ID from riders who can’t show they’ve paid. A rider without a government-issued ID card could instead show mail, receipts, shelter cards or other documents on hand. In certain situations, the officers will take their photo.
Kirk Hovenkotter, executive director of Transportation Choices Coalition, praised Metro’s return to fare inspection as a “thoughtful and compassionate approach. It could be a model for the nation.”
Hovenkotter, whose nonprofit advocates for better and safer transit, was involved with Metro’s SaFE initiative and said fare payments are important.
“Fares make transit in big cities like Seattle possible. We can’t have transit without fares,” he said. “Riders are happy to pay fares for world-class transit service.”
More to the point, Hovenkotter said Metro’s plan won his group’s endorsement because Metro jettisoned the misdemeanor criminal charge that came with a third fare violation.
“We support this approach because it doesn’t lead to people in the criminal justice system,” he said.
Crime and ridership
Fears of an unsafe transit system in Seattle are often unfounded, but two days in December didn’t help dispel those worries.
First, on Dec. 16, Metro closed all the bus stops at South Jackson Street and 12th Avenue South, citing “safety concerns” at the notorious intersection, which Metro at the time said “continues to be a location of frequent illegal activity.” (Metro plans to reopen those stops March 3.)
Less than 48 hours later, bus driver Shawn Yim was fatally stabbed in the University District while working. His suspected killer, a passenger, was caught days later.
But it wasn’t just one distressing week on local transit.
On Monday, two people were injured in a shooting on a Metro bus in Tukwila. Last May, a man was stabbed to death at the Capitol Hill light rail station, and in August another person was stabbed in an early morning altercation at the Tukwila Station. In 2023, a man was stabbed 19 times at random on a light rail train at Othello Station, and a young man was shot to death in a targeted attack aboard a bus in White Center.
In 2023, Metro reported 31 assaults on bus drivers. Last year, 15 were reported.
Assaults on the nation’s transit workers that led to death or injury doubled between 2013 and 2022, according to the Federal Transit Administration’s Office of Transit Safety and Oversight. In 2013, there were 222 such assaults. In 2022, there were 474.
Looking at all major assaults on transit systems serving U.S. cities with more than 50,000 people, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported 789 assaults in 2013. The number more than doubled to 1,770 in 2022.
Metro said it does not draw a direct relationship between fare evasion and rider behavior.
But the agency does see a line between ridership and funding.
Before the pandemic, fares were Metro’s second-largest revenue source, behind sales tax collections. In 2024, fares were fourth — behind sales tax, service reimbursement from Sound Transit and grants.
October — typically a peak month for Metro — saw an average of 286,531 riders on weekdays. Last year, the agency had several days of bus ridership that reached 320,000, and still more days that climbed over 300,000, according to Jeff Switzer, a Metro spokesperson. The agency determines ridership using automatic passenger counters, electronic devices that register when people get on and off the bus.
These numbers don’t match what the system had before the pandemic. In October 2015, Metro registered its highest average weekday boardings, with nearly 425,000.
Still, last year’s ridership growth merited recognition from the American Public Transportation Association as the second-largest rider increase in the country, behind Washington, D.C., and ahead of San Francisco, San Diego and Chicago.
Metro’s growth, while notable, mirrored national trends. Transit agencies in the U.S. provided 6.9 billion trips in 2023, an increase of 17% from 2022, according to a recent report from the Federal Transit Administration, which said that trips on public transportation grew twice as fast as domestic air travel.
Yet, while ridership climbs back, fare payment lags.
In 2023, fares paid for just 17% of operating costs for U.S. transit agencies, a measurement known as farebox recovery. That’s down from 2019, when fares covered 32% of what it cost to operate the nation’s transit agencies.
In Metro’s case, fares brought in $71 million in 2023, more than half of which came from employer-based Orca cards. The fares paid for just below 7% of operations.
In 2024, Metro’s farebox recovery is estimated to reach 8.8% — far below what fares paid between 2009-19, when they covered more than 25% of Metro’s operation.
In December, the Metropolitan King County Council updated Metro’s fare goals, stating that the agency should recover at least 10% of operational costs, with a target of 15%. The policy is a “guiding metric rather than a strict requirement,” Switzer said in an email. Previously, fares were required to cover 25% of the system’s operations, with a goal of 30%.
Fare enforcement should help Metro meet its goal, Hawks said.
“I think that’s the most likely outcome, that we’d get more folks paying fare,” he said. “That’s certainly our goal and it’s important for us to have.”
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